Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, wants the Supreme Court to upend how Americans vote by declaring it unconstitutional for voters to cast their ballots through electronic voting systems.
Attorneys for Lake and former Arizona state Representative Mark Finchem filed a petition with the Supreme Court on Thursday, asking the court to revive their 2022 lawsuit challenging the use of electronic voting machines in Arizona. It had been slammed by judges as “frivolous” at the time.
In the new filing, attorney Lawrence Joseph asked the Supreme Court to give the Arizona Republicans a do-ever in light of new evidence that was not known when his clients first filed their claim, and so couldn’t be presented to a federal judge in Arizona. Joseph said he believes there is enough evidence to conclude that a new trial would result in a different income.
The petition is the latest development that continues to drag out the now two-year fight over Arizona’s election system. The plaintiffs are asking the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional “for any public election to be conducted using any model of electronic voting system to cast or tabulate votes.”
“Procedural-rights plaintiffs have standing for a ‘do-over’ under the proper procedures and standards, even if the election might produce the same winners,” Joseph wrote in the petition. “A court could order ‘do-over’ relief (i.e., counting the paper ballots) in the 2022 election as well as similar relief for future elections.”
The allegations, which were first made when Lake was running as the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, had previously been rejected by both an Arizona district court judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Lake’s attorneys were sanctioned by the lower court to deter them from bringing “similarly baseless suits in the future.” Her lawyers are appealing those sanctions, with oral arguments expected in July.
“Newly uncovered evidence also shows Arizona’s Maricopa County flagrantly violated state law for electronic voting systems—including using altered software not certified for use in Arizona—and actively misrepresented and concealed those violations,” the petition reads.
It states: “Perhaps worse—although potentially unknown to Maricopa—the Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., systems used in Maricopa and almost thirty states have a built-in security breach enabling malicious actors to take control of elections, likely without detection.”
Kent Nishimura
Joseph argued that because Lake is now the Republican candidate for Senate and Finchem is running for state Senator, the issue of electronic voting machines remains an obstacle for the plaintiffs as the 2024 election nears.
But former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek he expects the effort to be unsuccessful if it’s filed directly to the high court “because the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over very few types of cases, and they rarely allow for direct appeals that skip the trial and appellate courts.”
The appeals court had previously found that Lake and Finchem’s “operative complaint relies on a ‘long chain of hypothetical contingencies’ that have never occurred in Arizona and ‘must take place for any harm to occur’.”
“This is the kind of speculation that stretches the concept of imminence ‘beyond its purpose,'” the unanimous opinion said.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.